BD:??? Is there ever a case where someone else conducts your music better than you do?

PB:??? I haven’t seen that until now, but it can happen.? That depends on what generation it is because some of my works require very classical conducting, so there’s no problem.? But in some other works there is quite a different technique of conducting.? There is free choice, free cueing and so on, and some people are not at all easy with that.? They don’t know what to do exactly when you have to form the material, when the material is there but not already put together.? Then you have to make the gesture yourself, and not only just metrically make a gesture but to make the gesture of performing with sound bodies.? You must give much more of yourself and be much more aware of the material you’re handling than if you are just conducting in the classical way.

BD:??? This is not a case of your leaving, perhaps, too much for the conductor?

PB:??? No, I think I don’t leave too much.? That’s the kind of performance which is asking from the conductor something he can give which is not above his possibilities, but he has to explore these possibilities because they were not explored during his education, and that’s exactly the point.? Sometimes I’m very disappointed.? When I see a work like?Eclat, for instance, when you have cues to give freely which gives a very specific tension to the work because people are not really given cues in one, two, three, four, and so on, but they are given ‘yes, you play; here you play; here you play’ according to what I decide last minute.? So everyone waits and so it gives a kind of tension, which is required for that.? Some parts, where everything was codified with one, two, three, four, five, that’s not difficult.? But the difficulty’s the art.? The tension is art.? I know conductors who would do my work very well?—?Abbado, for instance, and Barenboim?—?but sometimes I am amazed.? I had an experience not long ago of somebody who picked up one of my works and the tempi were really wrong, or what you can call wrong.? There are metronome marks, but I’m not really a man who looks at 72 rather than 73.? I know that you cannot be so accurate, and that metronome marks are just a kind of window of speed.? But his speed was much below the speed which has been indicated!

BD:??? About 56 or something like that?

PB:??? Yes!? [Both laugh]? The piece just sagged and was unbearable to me.? Then you feel very uncomfortable when you listen, and suddenly you are like the back-seat driver.? You see the car coming to a crash and you cannot do anything about it.? I would not have been a good instructor for driving!? [Both laugh again]

BD:??? How can one rehearse a piece that requires this on-the-spot thinking in performance?

PB:??? It should be rehearsed slowly first.? You rehearse and wait.? Tell them I will do that so this cue and this cue for you, and you call the instrument each time so that’s the first reaction.? They know to look at what they are to play.? That’s generally not difficult because when it’s too difficult you could not really have this kind of attention to the cue.? But you start here.? You have a call for everybody, and then after that you do it silently because they must react to the vision cue.? You have to do it silently and slowly, and then progressively you speed up.? Then you have to force yourself to make a different order each time so they are surprised.? They should notice that if I do a different order, they have to be always attentive to what I’m doing, and not just waiting for the cue.

BD:??? Does any of that kind of rehearsal technique transfer to standard repertoire?

PB:??? No, this kind of conducting does not apply to normal repertoire, but I must say that I had it much easier with this repertoire because my arms are completely free.? I can give just cues for entrances, or look at the instrument and just beat the time precisely.? You acquire an independence of the arms, which is much more than you could do in the repertoire generally.? That’s nothing to do one to the other, but you benefit from this experience.

BD:??? When you’re conducting the standard repertoire, what can you leave for the performance, or is all the work done in rehearsal?

PB:??? The work is mainly done in rehearsal because I don’t want the orchestra to be surprised in a bad way because of erratic conducting.? That is not really very valuable to me.? I prefer to have a very thorough preparation, and then you give the overdrive by enjoying the performance.? Then you can actually make a little bit more.? It is still the line you have indicated, only it’s a steeper line or a line which goes more sudden than they expected when you were rehearsing.? But that’s not irrational compared to what you have done.? It is some kind of expansion of what you have done, but on the same line and in the same direction.? That I find very important because then they are surprised, and they expect? a surprise because if the performance is exactly like the rehearsal there is something missing.? But if the performance is so different from the rehearsal and everybody’s lost and doesn’t know what to do, you have to reinforce the features but in the direction you have chosen to give them during the rehearsal.

BD:??? If have three or four or six or even eight performances of the same work or set of works, is each performance the same, or does each performance have a little different emphasis?

PB:??? The difficulty is to keep fresh when you have four concerts sometimes one after another.

BD:??? So how do you keep it fresh?

PB:??? You force yourself if you are interested in music, especially when you want to hear it properly.? Maybe the first time will be more tense because it is the first time you go in front of an audience.? But then there is the excitement, and the second time you are more secure in a way, less tense, less nervously tense, but then you have a more musical approach.? There are different types of tension.? There is the tension, what the Germans call?Lampenfieber?or anxiety in front of the audience.? Then you have also pure nervousness, which is generally not good if you don’t dominate it.? Then you have a kind of excitement with your audience when you are assured that the work will go well.? You master all the conditions, and sometimes when you are repeating something too many times it’s very difficult to force yourself to overcome this once more.

BD:??? Think of it as one last concert?

PB:??? Yes, although the last one is okay because, as you say that’s the last one.? It’s the ones in between that are more difficult.

BD:??? Do you conduct differently on the podium than you do in the recording studio?

PB:??? No, it is approximately the same.? I am maybe more aware in a recording studio of the small mistakes, because you begin and your ear is sharp.? During a performance, if the sweep is there and the vitality is there, a blurb is not heard twice.? You prefer that it is not there of course, but if it is there, you accept it.? But in a recording session you cannot.? The difficulty is to keep the tension and the vitality with the perfection, especially when a blurb comes out.? In a recording session then you begin to make inserts, one, two, three times, and the third time you really have to push yourself very hard not to think ‘once more, once more, once more’.? You have to keep this freshness, and also keep the same notion of tempo because if the insert has to be used, you have to be very aware of the tempo fitting into it, especially if that’s in a large part of the work.? You also need to consider the right balance so it does not just go out.? Generally what I do in recording sessions is an entire part of the work.? I cannot record just small bits, and I make inserts only if it is really necessary.? If after two or three takes of the whole thing we don’t have it very clear, either from the balance point of view or from the instruments point of view, then I make inserts.? But I’m very careful not to make just juxtaposed small bits.

BD:??? When you’re giving a concert, do you ever feel that you’re competing against the record you made?

PB:??? No.? I have no memory for my records.? Sometimes I don’t recognize them, especially recordings that go back twenty years ago.? I’m not hypnotized by photographs of myself.? I don’t look as I was at twenty-five and then at thirty and then at thirty-five and so on.? [Laughs]? It is a kind of narcissistic enjoyment I don’t have at all!

BD:??? [With mock horror]? But you don’t disown the old records, do you???

PB:??? No, no, I don’t disown my pictures either.? [Laughs even more]? I was younger and that’s it, and it is the same for recordings.? I did that, and if that’s me I would not do it now this way, or on the contrary, this piece was rather good and I would like to do it again this way now.? So you can’t put judgments on what you have done because you know very well that recording sessions are really very demanding, and you have very rarely the possibility of doing a recording like you want because time is measured, sometimes very strictly, and happy or not sometimes you have to move on because it costs money!? I remember very, very well?The Rite of Spring?with the Cleveland Orchestra.? We did this recording extremely quickly because we had performed the work quite a number of times over two or three years.? Then I think we did the recording within four hours, which was quite an achievement.? I remember very well the first session I had in the States, and I was told we could get ten minutes of finished record every hour.? There are all the rules, and of course you begin and you don’t think about the rules at the time.? You go to hear some takes, and because I had always recorded in Europe, especially in England, everything there was calm.? But here I asked the manager of the personnel how much time we had left, and I saw him calculating.? There were not those small machines then, and he calculated and said twenty-seven minutes!? I thought that’s a very precise answer!? [Laughs]

BD:??? In Europe they would have said you have a half-hour.

PB:??? Yes, exactly!? But here it was just to the minute.? It teaches you how to use the time with the maximum of efficiency, that’s for sure, but sometimes you would like a little more leeway during the session.

BD:??? Is there ever a chance that because of the cut and paste a recording becomes too perfect?

PB:??? No, it can’t be that.? [Laughs]? It can’t be that because if you are looking for perfection, you are beginning to be tight and stiff, and then you are looking only with the hope that the horns will not blurb again, or the strings will make the right entrance or something like that because you can’t have a mistake like that.? Then you are so stiff with yourself and don’t think anymore of playing, just listening to mistakes.? You have to get over that.? Mistake or not, I will play.? I admire very much the old generations.? In the 30s and 40s we were recording just like that, and mistake or not it has been there.? I find in these old recordings that there were very few mistakes indeed.? The more you trust the take and that mistakes will be corrected, the more mistakes you will make.? I suppose that’s the difficulty of getting through like that in a thing that is very important to me.? I notice that, for instance, with some German radio orchestras because they are accustomed to record and edit for the broadcasts.? They record like for the recording industry.? They tape it and they make inserts and they’re editing.? Then of course you have good broadcasts, but what it came sometimes to the concert, everybody was shaking because then there was no way of correcting mistakes.? People would not take a chance and the performance would be not shaky, but not really outgoing.? There was always this restraint character which came from the lack of agressivity.

BD:??? Do the best concerts result from the most risk-taking?

PB:??? Oh, I think so.? You must have it.?? When you give a concert, you must have a certain aggressiveness to convince people.? That’s like actors.? In film an actor can just move a finger and everything is magnified by the screen, but actors in the theater just do that with the best intentions and will not be seen.? So he has to act a little more.? I don’t want music to be tight and trivial, but certainly it has to be obvious and convincing.? Especially in a big hall with a big orchestra, you cannot play exactly like you play a string quartet for two other people.

BD:??? What about the same sized orchestra in a small hall or a big hall.? Do the subtleties change?

PB:??? Yes, certainly the performance of an orchestra changes with the hall.? You are very aware of that during a tour especially.? When I was with the BBC, in each tour we had at least a half an hour or three quarters of an hour’s rehearsal to listen to the hall.?

BD:??? So that rehearsal really wasn’t for you, it was for the orchestra?

PB:??? No, for the orchestra and for me and also for the hall.? You could adjust, so on the evening you were sure of what you were doing.? Of course it was in an empty hall and for all of them it is slightly different, but that’s not a big adjustment.? But when was on tour with the New York Philharmonic, then you change halls every day practically, and it’s too expensive to have a rehearsal.? So you go into the hall just for the concert and then sometimes you have big surprise.? You have a hall which is dry like hell, and the next day you have a very resonant hall.? It takes a quarter of an hour at least to make the adjustment which is absolutely necessary.? For instance in a very resonant hall, you don’t go as quickly as in a dry hall, and sometimes in a very dry hall you have to put the brake on your orchestra because they are going faster and faster because they don’t hear anything particularly!

BD:??? If you know that kind of tour is coming, do you purposely put an overture at the top just to get the adjustment in each hall?

PB:??? That’s better if you have a short work to begin with certainly, yes.

BD:??? You don’t start out with the big heavy piece?

PB:??? No, unless you are forced to do so.? Even with a Mahler symphony sometimes you will hear a short piece before it.

BD:??? Who makes the decisions about repertoire??

PB:??? That depends on the countries.? For instance, with the?Ninth Symphony?of Mahler generally in New York people don’t do anything else, and you begin with that.? That’s it.? But in England, for instance, for the Proms concerts from the summer season, Proms are longer generally than during the winter season, and then even the?Ninth Symphony?be considered too short.? So you have to put either a Mozart symphony or a Mozart concerto, or anything of this approximate duration before, which fits in the program of course.

BD:??? How do you decide which pieces of music from the vast literature you will program in the next season?

PB:??? It’s not my problem anymore.? [Laughs]? I choose now just for a couple of concerts I am doing, and generally I make a special choice for very special programs which are not to do generally with the big repertoire.? I am concentrating on pieces which I like to do, especially pieces of the twentieth century.? I don’t go back now even to the nineteenth century.? There are so many people who are conducting nineteenth century anyway.? They don’t need me.

BD:??? Are there too many conductors?

PB:??? There are not enough who conduct twentieth century.? I’m not against the nineteenth century repertoire, but it has to be expanded quite a lot.? You can’t live only on seventy-five years or a hundred years of music.? It’s not enough.? What I do myself is try to balance the program and to have unity or very well balanced contrast between the pieces.? For me that’s very important because you cannot have a uniform program.? You have to have some variety, especially when you put works together which are of a similar period.? Then you have to have a great variety of contrast in the personalities of the composer, or if you have different periods of history, then you can rely on the same character reflecting in different styles.? But to make programs, you have to take into account many, many problems, not counting Union problems.? If you deal only with artistic problems, there are lots to consider, and it’s not always easy to make programs which are appealing and rather logical and which make a season.? When I was in charge, I tried not to be uniform but in the same time people would remember a season more or less by a profile at least.? If not really a main theme or a main idea, but at least a kind of profile when people say that this year I’ve heard this work, this work, this work, this work, and then the remember it as being interesting.? I remember one of the years in New York there was no main theme, but I did the works related with Mr. Faust in music?—?The Damnation?of course by Berlioz, the?Faust Symphony?of Liszt, the?Eighth?Mahler and I planned also the Busoni?Dr. Faust?but it was too much.? To hear three or four pieces around this theme in the season is not really forcing you down to a theme, but in the same time you remember that in this season it was this highlight.? I am very much in favor of this kind of signal given to the audience about something.

BD:??? You resisted the urge to call it a Hell of a Season!

PB:??? Yes!? [Both laugh]

*???? *???? *???? *???? *

BD:??? Are you pleased with a lot of the new music that you see coming from other composers, either European or American?

PB:??? Yes, I am pleased that there is new music!? [Laughs]? I realize there are always people writing, and even writing a lot.? If you’re in a position like I am, I receive quite a lot of scores.? I don’t read them all, of course.? I cannot.? We have a reading committee for that which changes every year because I don’t want to have the same people always.? We try to find always an instrumentalist, a very young composer, a more mature composer, and some conductor so that we have four different types of personality who can judge with a very different approach.? Everybody will look more or less with the eyes of his generation.? You have somebody of twenty-five or twenty-eight going along with somebody of fifty, so the approach will be slightly different.? So we try to change, and I change every year because then it’s not a house committee?—?which is the worst in all cases.? But it changes, and we are very, very open.? What we ask for is that there is some kind of direction in the music, and not to go on imitation or something which is immature and not interesting, or out of this period completely.

BD:??? Do you look at the scores that are recommended by the committee?

PB:??? Yes, when the committee has selected quite a lot of scores.? Sometimes I receive complaints, so I look at the scores of the people who complain that they were rejected for maybe no good reason.? Generally that’s very rare that they are rejected for bad reasons, but I leave everything open because I don’t like to have martyrdom on my shoulders.? People should not feel that they are sacrificed to either the spirit of the house, or bad feelings about somebody, or personal relationships which are bad and so on.? That is completely excluded and therefore we have a really broad choice of scores.

BD:??? But basically you’re pleased at what you see coming through?

PB:??? Yes, oh yes.

BD:??? Are there perhaps too many young composers coming along?

PB:??? Would you ask me before the Olympic Games if you have too many swimming pools?? No.

BD:??? But I might ask if you have too many swimmers.

PB:??? No, because the more swimmers you have, the more chance you have to have a winner.? For me, that’s essential.? Of course I can’t imagine that all these composers will be big personalities of the future, but there must be encouragement to produce.? The relationship with the audience, if they are selected, will teach something, and the audience will learn something also from that.? Certainly it is more for me, as I was always against the?‘ivory tower’.??Of course you write for yourself.? You don’t write for an audience, but you need to present yourself in front of an audience and to have your work performed, and experience this kind of nervous tension which is explicit in a performance.? You are there and you listen to that.? When you listen alone you think it is all right, but when you listen in the middle of the audience, your pulse does not beat in the same way, certainly not.? For these young people to hear the work in front of an audience is a very good lesson.? I do that, and the more we can play with a certain amount of quality, the more I will inscribe in the programs.? Maybe the first work is not really the top, but the second or the third will be much better.

BD:??? Is there a place in the repertoire for the second and even third-line works?

PB:??? Yes, I think so.? Even in the classical repertoire I am amazed.? I am amazed that the music museums are made only of peaks.? I don’t like the musical culture which is shaped like a Swiss cheese full of holes!? You see only big works or those of a well-known composer.? If you play an unknown symphony of Haydn, you know that’s by Haydn.? That isn’t very interesting, but that’s a chain.? In the art museum you have Rembrandt, but you also see all the people who painted in the same time and you know why Rembrandt came above the other one because you are aware of the quality.? Otherwise if you only hear the same works constantly, you don’t have any comparison.? You don’t have any historical view.? It makes you look at history like frozen things.? You unpack the frozen thing, and then you pack it back, and that’s what I find really horrifying.? For me, it is not culture.? It’s just the worst aspect of consuming.

BD:??? So what, for you, is the ultimate purpose of music?

PB:??? To enlarge your vision of the world.? It seems very pretentious to say that, or very Germanic in a way, as I mean?Weltanschauung, but that’s that.? It’s not only entertaining yourself with nice sounds.? If it is only that, it’s not really very rich.? I like music as part of my general culture.? I go to theater, I go to the art museum, I read a book, so I want to have music as part of this culture.? There are of course various aspects or various levels of culture.? I don’t want to be always like that and only listen in the most severe way.? Certainly there are different levels.? I can hear a?Divertimento?by Mozart and be entertained by that.? Mozart did not mean more than that, but it was always very high-level entertaining.? But if you hear?Don Giovanni?or if you hear?Wozzeck, you have to be involved much more than just spending two hours digesting so we can think of other things later.

BD:??? Then where is the balance then between the artistic achievement and the entertainment value?

PB:??? Entertainment is value.? I don’t contest this, but you cannot live only on entertainment.? Entertainment is only part of the culture, and not the biggest part of the culture.? There are layers of culture and sometimes you want to go deeper in yourself.? Like in life, you cannot listen to jokes all day.? You listen to three or four jokes and then that’s enough!? Entertainment is a little bit like that.? If you are entertained, after a while you see the shortcomings of the situation.? Therefore I think the musical life has to reflect all these aspects.? Among historical aspects, entertainment as really a deepening feeling about human beings.? Everything goes round human beings, and you cannot really exclude music of the human being just because it is sometimes pleasant or sometimes unpleasant.? It is there not only for just listening, but to try to understand what is impossible to express by words.? It is simply that.

BD:??? Are we getting the new masterpieces coming along?

PB:??? Certainly we are getting masterpieces coming along.?? Every generation has put masterpieces.? It is only that you see they are masterpieces after because you don’t see history.? People who want to be historical when they are there are not historical precisely because these conclusions are made later.? You cannot see yourself as part of history and be out of historical context and in historical context.? That’s a view which is impossible.? You do something and then later people will tell exactly what part you are.? You can be conscious of what elements you are, more or less.? You are conscious of your genealogical tree, though not always very precisely.? But you are aware and you know from where you came, but for the future you cannot know.? There were readjustments that were done when the history was sometimes very quickly severe.? If I look in the period between the two Wars in France or in Europe generally, there was a marvelous period before the First World War.?? In 1910, 1915, 1917, 1918, there were a lot of discoveries in all fields, especially in music.? There were some great works, and then after in this period of Two Wars, there was a tendency to be so-called classical, and then lots of people wanted to be historically classical.? When you see that now, you see it’s just fake.? That’s like a plastic Greek temple, for instance, and that does not fit at all.? History has been very quick to look at that in a very severe way, and to make this period before and during the First World War a really very, very strong period in inventiveness and creativity.? Then the period in between was like something which is really tired and not interesting, short of ideas and trying to fulfill an ideal which was very artificial and uninteresting.? And I suppose on our period there will be, certainly in forty years from now, the same type of judgments, but we cannot make them right now.? I can begin a little bit of my trajectory, and although I don’t regret my trajectory, I see very well the excesses of the illogicism of this trajectory.? It seemed to me logical at the time and seemed to me not foolish, but it is unnecessary right now.? I had to go through this path, and if you go like [demonstrates an up and down motion], okay.? If you want to join this point, you have to go sometimes like that, and I could have done that really straight, but finally I had to do that to arrive where I am.

BD:??? You have to have the hills and valleys in your career!

PB:??? Exactly, exactly.

BD:??? Is the music of Pierre Boulez great?

PB:??? [Laughs]? It is certainly not for me to say that was great.? That would be the least thing I will think of.

BD:??? What advice do you have for young composers just coming along, or even for middle-aged composers?

PB:??? They must find their way!? There is no advice to give.? I was a very bad teacher because I never gave any advice.? I was criticizing the pieces which were presented to me from my point of view, and I said things from my point of view.? If I would be you, as one says generally, I would not have written that, but I am not you, so you can write it if you want!? That’s all I can say.? I can say, for instance, technically that’s not good or the ideas are not terribly strong, or the ideas are very interesting but not expanded properly.? That I could say, all kinds of technical remarks, but not to speak about creative ideas.? That’s you.? You find your way or you don’t find your way, but no advice will be of any help.? You have a lot of great performers who have very poor students, and you have rather mediocre performers who are excellent teachers and have wonderful students.? I think for composition it is almost the same.? What I think you can learn in composition is the process of writing music. That’s certainly counterpoint, harmony and things like that in a technical background.? But once you come to composition really, there is nothing to be taught.? You can show what you did, how is your way, how you can take a score from somebody else and then develop something from that.? That you can teach more or less, but to compose, really that you cannot teach.? I believe very much in the kind of shock in teaching, in composition at least.? You meet a personality, or a person meets you and then there is a kind of explosive shock which is very quick. If you don’t have it, you can spend years and it will never happen, and if you have it, you don’t need years, you need only maybe hours and it will be enough.? Therefore I am highly skeptical about teaching composition, and therefore after three years I gave up!

BD:??? Do you have any advice for conductors?

PB:??? I have no advice there either because myself I have been a purely self-taught conductor.? I’ve never learned conducting, really.? I learned on the spot, in the theater conducting incidental music for a group of musicians for the Jean-Louis Barrault theater.? Then I used the skills I found for myself progressively, and expanded them to bigger and bigger groups, and especially for contemporary music because I was the less expensive conductor for my own organization!? I did not have to pay myself!? So I could conduct progressively with musicians.? We were new to this music in the early ‘50s, so we learned together how to perform it and I learned how to conduct it.? I had conducting classes twice in my life in Basel.? The composition class was also in Basel, in Switzerland.? It’s like driving a race car or a general car.? When you are put into the car you learn to drive a car and what you have to do.? You have to put the motor on, and learn how go and to brake!? [Laughs]? The brake is very important, and that’s exactly what is also important in conducting?—?how to begin and how to stop!? In between you have to learn all by yourself.

BD:??? What advice do you have for audiences?

PB:??? To come and listen.? That’s a very simple advice, but more seriously I would like to say they have to come with an open mind.? That’s not enough, but they need to know that we are only a point in history, and even if we don’t want it, we will be pushed out.? It’s absolutely inexorable.? You know you cannot resist that.? The movement of history goes very slowly sometimes, but absolutely forward without any pity for yourself.? It is much more enjoyable to try to discover his own time than to resist it, because resistance to time is painful.? Try to go with it.? It’s sometimes enjoyable at least!

BD:??? Do you conduct anymore operas anymore?

PB:??? No.? Not that I am against it or I don’t want to do it, but it takes too much time.? When you are interested as I am in a production of an opera, I choose the director, generally, or I agree with the director who is chosen, so I want to work with him.? That way the musical side and the theatrical side are exactly on the same wavelength.? For instance when I did the?Ring, in ’75 I already began to work with Chéreau.? Then in ’76, which was première, the direction not perfect because? you cannot do everything well for the first time with this type of work.? Then? progressively we worked and worked and worked, and then our fourth and fifth year were really good.? I involved myself.? I would not come, for instance, just eight days before the premiere and rehearse.? I don’t find that’s very, very fantastic from the theatrical point of view.? What I want is to be involved with the director and to see what I can do.? Sometimes I can correct him,? sometimes I get input from him.? That’s an exchange work and that’s interesting,? but for that you must devote two or three months just for a single production.

BD:??? When we last talked, you were thinking of writing an opera.? Has that come to pass yet?

PB:??? It’s nearer its goal than it was before.? [Laughs]? That’s all I can say for the time being.

BD:??? Would you conduct it, or would you rather direct it?

PB:??? I would neither direct nor conduct, but attend.? If the project materializes, I would use quite a lot also of electronic technique, and then I prefer to have a look at everything.? Sometimes it’s very disturbing.? I’m obliged to tell a musician to conduct for me because where I am, once I am conducting, I am not aware of the balance between what comes from the instruments far away because of what I am conducting in front of me.? So therefore I have to check it from the hall.

BD:??? I would think that would be almost universally true for anything you conduct?— that?the podium is the worst place to listen.

PB:??? No, no.? It does not give you maybe the right image or the definite image, but you have to sit in a seat if you want to have perfect image.? With instruments which are not transformed or not amplified, then you can have a good picture on the podium.? But there, with the distance and with loudspeakers and the relationship with the dynamics, then you cannot really judge properly.? Then it has to be checked, either by some collaborator you trust or some musician you trust.? For this opera, especially with stage involved and everything like that, I prefer to be an observer more than a participant myself.

BD:??? Are you coming back to Chicago?

PB:??? I cannot tell you yet.? I think I will come back certainly, but I cannot tell you when, and under what circumstances.? [Note: Boulez first appeared with the Chicago Symphony on subscription concerts in February 1969 conducting Debussy’s?Jeux, Bartók’s?First Piano Concerto?with Daniel Barenboim, Webern’s?Passacaglia?and?Six Pieces for Orchestra, and Messiaen’s?Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum.? In 1995, he would be named Principal Guest Conductor, and in 2006 Conductor Emeritus.

BD:??? The Chicago Symphony responds to your music?

PB:??? Oh, very much so, yes, very much.

BD:??? They’re very open to it?

PB:??? There is no problem, no problem at all.? On the contrary, our relationship is very good.? It’s an orchestra not only of reputation, but the reputation is justified.

BD:??? Are there orchestras that the reputation is not justified.

PB:??? No, I don’t say that, but sometimes you hear an orchestra and you are disappointed by the level which is not exactly what you expected.? But here in this case the level is extremely high.

BD:??? Whatever you want or ask, you get?

PB:??? Oh, yes.

BD:??? Does that make you ask for more?

PB:??? Yes, certainly because you go quicker, and you begin here from a level where sometimes the difficulties are hard to reach.? So you can deal much more with the music than the technicalities because there are a lot of technicalities which are absorbed already.? For me, the main superiority of a big high-level orchestra is precisely that.? It’s not that you’re enjoying this kind of technical approach, which is almost perfect, but this level you begin with allows you to go much more into performing.

BD:??? I am glad we give you such an instrument to work with.? Thank you again for speaking with me today.?

PB:??? You’re very welcome.